Chance and Yai-Yah (Archer Nelson)

Chance and Yai-Yah

My son Chance was born nearly nineteen years ago in Chicago, and for the first year of his life, I was a single father. I've barely been without him since he was born, with the exception of the better part of the past six months since he's moved away to college. I think my story is mostly about raising Chance and his two half-brothers, Carl and David. And it's about the boys' mothers.

I've been more reflective than normal since Chance went to college. Not to say that I'm not ordinarily an introspective guy anyhow--I am. But when Chance was born I made a promise to his mother, and now that I've pretty much finished raising him, I've been wondering how well I've kept my word. I'm sure every parent does the same, but not every parent raises a child with the ghost of his mother perched on his shoulder through the whole adventure.

These cold commutes are part of why my mind wanders as it does, too. I've got the right clothes and gear so it's not really uncomfortable, once I get warmed up, but one the tricks I've developed for keeping myself feeling toasty while I'm riding to work on sub-zero mornings is to remember warmer rides. It was hot the year Chance was born. The summer of '88 in Chicago was terrible for anyone without air conditioning. Dozens of senior shut-ins died in the heat that summer. Chance suffered from a terrible heat rash until Nancy--Deb's mom--came up with a used portable window air conditioner at a garage sale. I had to run an extension cord from the kitchen across the whole apartment to the bedroom where Chance and I slept so that I could plug into a circuit with a strong enough fuse, and I still blew fuses at least a couple of times a week when I forgot and turned on both the lamp and the TV while the AC was running. But Chance slept better, once I'd replaced the honk and wail of Roosevelt Road directly beneath our window with the steady deep humming of Nancy's portable AC unit.

My bedroom window looks out onto Roosevelt Road, a gritty, noisy street that comes from out someplace past the Tri-State Tollway, pushes through the western suburbs, past my apartment building and into the city, to an abrupt halt at Grant Park near the shore of Lake Michigan. For two years I have lived on Roosevelt Road. It wakes me up at night rumbling beneath the weight of semi-trucks hauling milk and bread in and out of the city, and each day it produces the strong current of traffic that sweeps me off to work in the morning and spits me back out later on. Most people who know Roosevelt Road want to spend as little time as possible on it. I am different in that I recognize and embrace the daily challenge of getting to my job as quickly as possible. For me, the twenty-five minutes between Oak Park and Chicago's Loop are the best of the day.

I don’t have an alarm clock—I leave waking up on time to Chance. Every morning, as reliable as any alarm, my son wakes up hungry and cries for me to come lift him out of his crib. For a moment I lay in bed wishing he would settle back to sleep, wishing it could be Deb's turn to get up and feed him, but he doesn't settle, and it’s been weeks since I briefly forgot or thought in a waking dream that Deb might be here beside me in bed, but Deborah is dead, so every morning it is my turn and I roll out of bed and stumble to lift Chance from his crib.

"Good morning, Chance," I say, smiling with one eye squeezed shut against the morning.
Chance coos his morning greeting, bounces up and down with his little fists tight around crib slats, smiling bright. He lets go of the crib rail and balances briefly, his arms stretching for me. "Da! Da!"

I scoop him up just as he is tipping back. "That's right, I'm Daddy. Did you sleep well?" I carry him tight against my hip and shoulder.

Chance gurgles something that I interpret as, Yes, Daddy, I slept very well, thank you.

"It would have been fine with me if you'd slept a little longer, you know. You don't have to wake up so early on my account."

Chance gurgles happily again. "Da!"

"I wish I could wake up so happy every morning."

In the living room I kneel and change his diaper on the floor. "Whoopsie!" I say, lifting him by the ankles with one hand, swiping the old diaper out with the other, replacing it with a fresh one. More happy gurgling.

I strap Chance into his high chair and spill a handful of Cheerios onto the tray to keep him occupied while I fill his juice bottle and get an egg scrambling. The morning news and weather play out on the radio. Eighty-two degrees and windless at six-thirty with a forecast high above ninety-five again. When the egg is ready I dump it onto a plate and jog back to my room, grab a jersey, socks, some riding shorts. Back in the kitchen, I sit at the table near the high chair and get dressed while Chance attacks the egg with both hands.

"That's not going to be enough this morning, is it?" I say. I drop bread slices into the toaster. When his egg is gone, I move him from the high chair in the kitchen to the wind-up swing in the living room and give him a slice of dry toast. Chance sits there swinging and smiling at me, alternately gnawing on the toast and waving his juice bottle at me while I do my stretching exercises and massage my legs with a few drops of baby oil. I leave the oil on. I like the chiseled shine it gives my calves in the morning sun.

“Is Yai-yah coming to see you today?””

Chance smiles and pounds an egg-filled fist excitedly on his high chair tray.

Nancy, my mother-in-law, often comes to Roosevelt Road to look after Chance when I travel for work or to spend a weekend with friends. She rushes in now, as if she’s late but she isn’t, sets a suitcase down inside the door, says something about an accident on the Eisenhower, and pulls Chance up out of his chair, smothers his face with kisses and smiles and giddy little cheek bites. She has the same amazing rapport with small children that Deborah did, and each time I see her with Chance—how utterly fascinated and completely sucked in he is by her friendly attentive face, her huge green eyes just like his mother’s—each time, I am reminded how fortunate we are to have her.

"He feels warm." Nancy has her hand across Chance's forehead as she breaks away from his wide-eyed gaze and turns only briefly to face me. "Has he been fussy?"

"Not at all." I pull the straps on my riding cleats snug and stand up off the couch.

"Have you taken his temperature? I'd better." She walks off into the bathroom, her face buried in Chance’s neck, kissing him again and puffing noisy little fart sounds against his skin. "Are you coming back here after work, Vic, or just going straight up for the wedding?" She reemerges from the bathroom with Chance in one arm, shaking the thermometer down with her other hand, as he giggles and writhes with excitement in her arms.

“I’ll come back, but probably not ‘til late. Eric wants to get together after work tonight to talk about the bachelor thing. I think it’ll be easier just to get an early start from here in the morning.” I unlock my bicycle from the radiator near the front door where I keep it secured with a coiled six-foot hardened-steel cable and combination lock.

“That’s probably better. Will you be able to make it all the way up there in one day, or will you still need to camp?”

“Oh, I’ll still camp out one night, I think. It’s a couple of hundred miles, you know. I’ll take off tomorrow and try to get up there before sunset on Thursday.”

“Are you still planning on being back on Monday?”

“As long as the weather stays nice, I should be. The wedding’s Saturday, and I should be able to start heading back on Sunday. Should be back Monday night.”

“Well, don’t take any chances—if the weather turns bad on your way back down, call and I can come get you.”

“That’s really nice, Nancy.” I give her a hug and a kiss on her cheek. Then I grab my backpack and throw its straps over both my shoulders, then lift the bike, grasp the frame midway between the saddle and the chainrings, lift it off the floor like a suitcase. “But I don’t think I’ll need help. I really want to do this all on my bike.”

Nancy carries Chance close to me so he can kiss me goodbye, which he accomplishes with prodigious drooling and smiling. "Where?" Chance asks, as he does every time someone appears to be going someplace.

"I'm going to work now, Chance," I say. "You stay here with Yai-Yah."

"Yai-Yah!" Chance says, smiling and yanking at one of Nancy's pepper-gray curls.

"Oh!” Nancy says. “I almost forgot—I have a couple of bags of groceries out in my car—could you bring them up for me?"

“No problem.” I put the bike down, kick off my riding cleats, kick on a pair of shoes and run down to the sidewalk. After depositing the groceries in the kitchen and tying my cleats back on, I kiss Chance again, thank Nancy once more, then clomp down the wooden steps behind our third-story apartment with my Masi under my arm.

Posted by Archer on February 24, 2007 7:30 PM | Permalink

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Archer Nelson

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Chance and Yai-Yah

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